This is a celebratory blog for me as according to the statistics published by google I have now passed my 10000th viewing.
As a friend of mine, a fund raising expert once commented, to raise a million pounds you either need one person to give you the million pounds or a million people to give you one pound.
Well I know that the indoor critic reads it, but not 10000 times, so I guess whilst some people must have read each of the 220 or so blogs at least once it still means that my thinking aloud is of wider interest than my immediate circle of friends.
My grandfather was foreman of a council tip.
Before the First World War he had been a miner, but having being gassed in the trenches, when he returned home he was not allowed to go back below ground where he had worked as a farrier tending to the pit ponies.
So he found a job as a dustman and was then made foreman of the council refuse tip.
It was amazing what people threw away, obvious things like pots and pans and kettles and old clothes and rubbish but on one occasion he found a dog tied to the handle of the dustbin which when he got back to the tip became the official office dog my grandmother not wanting it at home.
He often told my mother that the surest way to get your dustbins emptied was to leave something like a bit of metal sticking out of the top of the bin so the bin men would see it and know that there was something that they could weigh in for a few coppers to supplement their wages.
One of the great privileges of my life has been the opportunity to travel.
One of my most memorable trips was to Mexico.
Mexico City is huge some sixty miles across and on the edge of the City their are enormous refuse dumps where people, the poorest of the poor, live and scavenge.
Essentially they recycle the City´s waste.
For some that means finding what can be reused, and carrying it into the City and selling it, and you see folk sitting on the pavement with a few things at their feet trying to raise a few pesetas to get by.
The more creative might re-use what they scavenge to make things and I saw all sorts of beautiful ornaments and jewellery for sale which had been fashioned from the paper and tin and glass that other people had thrown away.
More recently in Genoa we saw the same phenomenon, some people selling things they had made from recycled goods they had found but also other people with a few scraps of torn clothes and broken things at their feet sitting or standing on the pavement.
Often the street vendors were immigrants often from North Africa but occasionally from Eastern Europe and sometimes in the evening if we looked out of our apartment window we would see the same people sorting through the rubbish bins in the street outside for anything that they could use or sell.
Now we are in Spain and the same phenomenon can be seen.
However here it seems it is more organised, the rubbish bins are on the street outside the security gates of the apartment block, shortly after we arrived, out for a walk in the evening, I saw two people arrive by car and using a series of tools which I assume they had made themselves for the specific purpose, they were searching through the bins and retrieving anything that they could possibly reuse or sell.
It is it seems a regular way for people to earn a living when I enquired however I was told that at one time it would be migrants who would pursue this kind of work but increasingly Spanish people are resorting to the practise, a sign, so my informant told me, of the economic times in which we find ourselves.
As far as I know my dustbins at home are still being emptied by the refuse collectors employed by the Council and the recycling we are encouraged to practise is officially condoned, which is why the plastic and paper and glass have to be separated and washed before being placed in the correct box or bag or bin.
What we have instead is the agencies, usually claiming to be working for charities raising funds for children or the elderly, who deliver a plastic bag for our unwanted clothes and then return to collect the bags.
Some of these collection agencies have been exposed as simply commercial enterprises making money out of the unwanted and donated goods.
But as the depression deepens and the poor are forced to bear the burden of economic mismanagement by seeing their benefits cut, to encourage them, whilst seeing the rich rewarded with tax cuts to encourage them, doubtless they will find new and imaginative strategies for survival.
Just leave that bit of metal sticking out of the top your dustbin ..............
As a friend of mine, a fund raising expert once commented, to raise a million pounds you either need one person to give you the million pounds or a million people to give you one pound.
Well I know that the indoor critic reads it, but not 10000 times, so I guess whilst some people must have read each of the 220 or so blogs at least once it still means that my thinking aloud is of wider interest than my immediate circle of friends.
My grandfather was foreman of a council tip.
Before the First World War he had been a miner, but having being gassed in the trenches, when he returned home he was not allowed to go back below ground where he had worked as a farrier tending to the pit ponies.
So he found a job as a dustman and was then made foreman of the council refuse tip.
It was amazing what people threw away, obvious things like pots and pans and kettles and old clothes and rubbish but on one occasion he found a dog tied to the handle of the dustbin which when he got back to the tip became the official office dog my grandmother not wanting it at home.
He often told my mother that the surest way to get your dustbins emptied was to leave something like a bit of metal sticking out of the top of the bin so the bin men would see it and know that there was something that they could weigh in for a few coppers to supplement their wages.
One of the great privileges of my life has been the opportunity to travel.
One of my most memorable trips was to Mexico.
Mexico City is huge some sixty miles across and on the edge of the City their are enormous refuse dumps where people, the poorest of the poor, live and scavenge.
Essentially they recycle the City´s waste.
For some that means finding what can be reused, and carrying it into the City and selling it, and you see folk sitting on the pavement with a few things at their feet trying to raise a few pesetas to get by.
The more creative might re-use what they scavenge to make things and I saw all sorts of beautiful ornaments and jewellery for sale which had been fashioned from the paper and tin and glass that other people had thrown away.
More recently in Genoa we saw the same phenomenon, some people selling things they had made from recycled goods they had found but also other people with a few scraps of torn clothes and broken things at their feet sitting or standing on the pavement.
Often the street vendors were immigrants often from North Africa but occasionally from Eastern Europe and sometimes in the evening if we looked out of our apartment window we would see the same people sorting through the rubbish bins in the street outside for anything that they could use or sell.
Now we are in Spain and the same phenomenon can be seen.
However here it seems it is more organised, the rubbish bins are on the street outside the security gates of the apartment block, shortly after we arrived, out for a walk in the evening, I saw two people arrive by car and using a series of tools which I assume they had made themselves for the specific purpose, they were searching through the bins and retrieving anything that they could possibly reuse or sell.
It is it seems a regular way for people to earn a living when I enquired however I was told that at one time it would be migrants who would pursue this kind of work but increasingly Spanish people are resorting to the practise, a sign, so my informant told me, of the economic times in which we find ourselves.
As far as I know my dustbins at home are still being emptied by the refuse collectors employed by the Council and the recycling we are encouraged to practise is officially condoned, which is why the plastic and paper and glass have to be separated and washed before being placed in the correct box or bag or bin.
What we have instead is the agencies, usually claiming to be working for charities raising funds for children or the elderly, who deliver a plastic bag for our unwanted clothes and then return to collect the bags.
Some of these collection agencies have been exposed as simply commercial enterprises making money out of the unwanted and donated goods.
But as the depression deepens and the poor are forced to bear the burden of economic mismanagement by seeing their benefits cut, to encourage them, whilst seeing the rich rewarded with tax cuts to encourage them, doubtless they will find new and imaginative strategies for survival.
Just leave that bit of metal sticking out of the top your dustbin ..............
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